ntietz.com: seven years, a fractal made of wood, and learning to rest
Hello and happy Friday!
The end of this month is going to bring something really exciting: !!con! It's a conference about the joy, excitement, and surprise of computing. I'll be giving a talk there on Saturday, August 24th!
If you're in the Santa Cruz, CA area or you want to watch online, there are still tickets available! It's name your own price (the organizers suggest $8 for online tickets, and you can go up or down to contribute more or better fit your ability to pay). I hope to see some of you there, in person or in Discord!
Other than that, I'm hoping to have a restful month (you'll notice I've been writing about rest). This mystery illness continues to be tough, but writing and expressing myself creatively helps me through it.
I hope you enjoy the posts, and as always, I'd love to hear from you if you have a question or a comment.
Blog updates
- Why I kept my startup job for seven years (and counting): I've stayed at one company for 7 years, which is very uncommon for software engineers. There are some good reasons, and I hope everyone can find a place like this (or help create it if they're in any form of leadership). And if you've got it, don't bounce!
- Approximating the Sierpinski Triangle on my CNC: Did you know that you can program computers to make things for you out of wood? I went down that rabbit hole and attempted to make a fractal on my robotic woodworking tool. The process was at times vexing but ultimately incredibly rewarding!
- TIL: testing in the future using the faketime command: I made a whoopsie and published something before it was meant to be live. In my attempt to figure out both how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again, I found the command
faketimeand learned how to use it. It's powerful for testing things that depend on time, and it's remarkably simple to use!
- Resting is hard: We're not taught how to rest. I've been forced to do less, and to examine why that's so hard.
- Integrate rest into your work and practice: A companion to the previous post, which was very personal, this one goes into the benefits of rest and gives some concrete suggestions on how to integrate it into your work and practice. This is something I try to do intentionally, but still have lots of room for improvement on.
Thanks for reading and subscribing! Please consider sharing my posts or newsletter with someone who might enjoy it, and have a great month. I'll see you again next month.
❤️ Nicole